Ten Things That Never Happened to Jack O'Neill
by Brenna
Summary: Response to a challenge at the Crossgate group. Ten short crossover stories of things that never happened to Jack plus one that might have.
1. Regret: Backdraft

Jack was already bored with the pre-mission briefing by the time General Hammond's secretary poked her head in the door saying there was an urgent call for him.

"Sir, with your permission?" he asked motioning with his hand to a phone placed conveniently atop the credenza positioned along the wall. Receiving his CO's nod, Jack pushed his chair back from the conference table. He walked the short distance to the phone and pressed the button steadily blinking red. "O'Neill," he identified himself to whoever was on the other end of the line.

"Jack," he heard his cousin's wife, Helen, greet him and the hitch in her voice told him everything else.

"He's dead," Jack stated quietly, but not quietly enough to avoid the notice of the others in the room with him.

"An industrial fire," Helen confirmed on a sob. "Stephen was with him."

"Stephen?" Jack questioned in confusion. "What was Stephen doing..."

"Stephen joined the department, Jack" Helen informed him. "He was working the fire too. He says its his fault Bull died. Jack, he's like you were after Charlie..."

Jack well remembered those dark days. He'd learned to handle the guilt he felt at his son's death, but not before it was almost too late. "I'll be there as soon as I can, Helen" he assured her vowing to himself to help his younger cousin before guilt and grief could destroy him as they had nearly destroyed Jack.


	2. Recruiting: Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan

Sara answered the knock at her door to find two men in dark business suits standing on her front porch. Sara had been a Spec. Op. wife long enough to recognize the way they carried themselves. Both men had a compact almost wiry build. Looking at them she noticed that the older looked to be just a few years older than Jack while the younger of the two seemed to be still a child to Sara's eyes. The younger man was Hispanic and from the way he held himself and how he shrugged his shoulders to settle his suit coat, Sara thought he wasn't that too far removed from the street. "Mrs. O'Neill, is your husband home?" the older one asked.

"Upstairs," Sara told them wearily not caring why they were here. Some distant part of her brain told her she was already distancing herself. Her mind already preparing to grieve for Jack as well as their son.

The footsteps coming up the staircase warned Jack in time for him to hide the pistol under the pillow on his son's bed.

"Mr. O'Neill, my name is John Clark," the older of the two who appeared in the doorway introduced himself, "and this is my partner Domingo Chavez."

Jack nodded not bothering to greet them verbally.

"We're here to offer you a job, Mr. O'Neill," Clark informed him as he leaned forward to extend a business card to the grieving man.

Jack glanced casually at it as he took it from Clark's hand. Three words jumped out at him from the small white card: Central Intelligence Agency. "You do know about my psych. evaluation don't you?" Jack asked them out of some distant sense of curiosity.

"Yes," Clark told him. He didn't reveal that he also knew about another offer about to be made to O'Neill. "I've been where you are, Mr. O'Neill. Let me help you before it's too late."

Jack stared at the two men for several minutes. He didn't know if he was trying to decide what to make of them or trying to make them leave so he could retrieve the gun from under the pillow and finally do what he'd been contemplating. The two men didn't react to his scrutiny though. They just stood patiently staring back at him as he stared at them. It surprised Jack when he broke first and finally nodded his acceptance of their offer.

He followed them down the stairs and out to their car vaguely aware of the younger man stopping to speak to Sara briefly.

Three hours later when several Air Force officers arrived at the front door, Sara told them Jack was already gone.


	3. Revenge: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Jack O'Neill stared through the one way mirror into the cell housing the prisoner as he used every technique he'd ever been taught in his special forces training to keep his emotions under control and the bile from rising up the back of his throat. He'd seen many horrifically violent things before and since joining the SGC. He'd even perpetrated his fair share of them during his black ops days, but nothing that compared to what they'd found in that storeroom on Level 31. Even Teal'c had seemed vaguely ill at the sight of the bloody murder.

"The...ahh...symbols are occult," Daniel explained to Jack and the general from where he stood on Jack's left. "He was trying to open a portal according to my research....something called a Hellmouth."

"Hellmouth?" Jack repeated trying to remember where he'd heard that word before.

"Yeah" Daniel confirmed. "Sam's doing a search now. So far the references we've found all have something to do with a town in California called..."

"Sunnydale," Jack supplied in a whisper, "Boca del Inferno."

"Ummm, that's it," Daniel confirmed. "How'd you know that, Jack?"

"Remember a few years ago when my sister's kid stayed with me for a week while he was on leave?" Jack asked.

"Riley," Daniel asked. "He was on medical leave wasn't he?"

Jack nodded. "The kid was coming unglued. Waking up screaming every night," Jack told them.

"Screaming about the Hellmouth?" Hammond asked.

Jack nodded. Before the conversation could continue Teal'c exited the cell. "Get anything out of him, T?" Jack asked.

"Indeed, O'Neill," Teal'c informed the other three men. "AirmanDavidson accepted substantial monetary payment from the NID on behalf of formerVicePresidentKinsey in exchange for performing this ritual."

"Let me see if I've got this straight," Jack said. "Kinsey hired someone to open a mouth to Hell in the SGC? Revenge right?"

Teal'c bowed his head in agreement with O'Neill's assessment.

"Call your nephew, Jack" Hammond ordered.


	4. Refuge: Day After Tomorrow

The recall orders went out to all SGC personnel immediately after the President's televised announcement of the evacuation of the southern United States. An evacuation that didn't include Colorado. After consulting with his top scientists, General George Hammond risked his career but not his conscience by sending out a recall order that included the families of the men and women under his command.

They streamed into the mountain through NORAD's great steel doors. The levels of emergency shelter normally used for off-world refugees soon filled with those seeking shelter from the approaching arctic storm that heralded the beginning of a new ice age.

"We don't have the supplies for this number of people!" NORAD's senior watch officer protested as the tide of refugees flowed through his command into the bowels of the mountain.

"It'll be fine," Jack snapped as he paused handing out assignments to the soldiers reporting to him after parting with their families a few yards away. There were too many names on his list still to be checked off. Jack knew some wouldn't make it into the mountain before the storm hit. He was all too aware that those that didn't make it back probably wouldn't make it at all.

"Now see here!" the senior officer objected.

"We've got it covered!" Jack told him knowing it was so. Carter's naquadah generator would allow them to dial out at least a dozen times with the naquadah they had on hand. Long before they ran out, miners on Abydos and Edora would have replenished their supply. If need be, they could send their refugees to any number of friendly worlds until the danger had passed. Those on the genesis list who had made it in had already been sent on to the Alpha and Beta sites.

"Colonel Jack!" a teenage voice called from the point down the corridor where the dependents were being logged in before being ushered down to the shelter area.

O'Neill turned away from the NORAD officer towards the voice and felt some of the fear and tension ease away from him as the last of his teammates, his family, arrived with Dr. Frasier and her daughter. Carter nodded to him as she left Frasier to the task of seeing to her daughter.

"Glad you made it, Carter" Jack told his 2IC knowing she could read from his expression just what an understatement it was.

"I could say the same, sir" Carter replied.


	5. Rescue: Iron Eagle

Though they attempted to move quietly, Jack still heard the movements of someone climbing the ladder to his rooftop observatory. For the moment, Jack pretended to ignore them as he continued to look through the eye piece of the powerful telescope. With his left hand, he made minute adjustments to the telescope's focus while his right hand slowly reached out for the handgun kept within easy reach. At almost the same moment, his hand closed around his weapon and the head and shoulders of a teenage boy appeared over the top of the ladder.

"Colonel O'Neill? Are you Colonel O'Neill?" the boy demanded.

"Who's asking?" Jack asked admiring the kid's spunk for coming up here at this time of night.

"Doug Masters," the teenager introduced himself as he climbed the remaining rungs of the ladder. "I live down the street," Masters explained as he stood uncertainly shifting from foot to foot.

Jack grunted in reply but released his grip on the handgun and reached for his beer bottle instead.

"They say you were black ops before you retired," the boy continued.

Jack took a second look at the kid. His voice a slow drawl that was more warning than curiosity as he asked, "Really?"

"I need your help, sir" Masters told the man all but ignoring him. "My dad's been shot down over the Gulf."

Jack winced slightly and quickly took a long hard pull from the bottle in his hand as his mind flashed to memories of his captivity in Iraq. "And?" Jack demanded of the kid.

"They're going to execute him in three days," Doug told the older man. "The Air Force isn't doing anything, sir. Please, sir. Please help me rescue my dad. I've got all the intel. I've got access to anything you need. Please! He's only got three days."

Looking at the kid, Jack thought about it. He had nothing better to do. He had returned home from the mission through the Stargate to find his things packed and waiting for him in the front hall of his home. Sara had finally had enough. She wanted him out of the house and out of her life. She wasn't the only one though. The Air Force didn't want him back either. They had no use for suicidal colonels who couldn't even die when they were told to.

"Tell me what you've got," Jack told the teenager knowing he couldn't leave a fellow officer in enemy hands if there was even the possibility of freeing him and that it was a better way to die than from the boredom slowly killing him now.


	6. Rewind: Seven Days

Four strangers stood near the back of the crowd watching two grieving parents bury their only child.

"The records of his captivity in Iraq show an incredibly high tolerance for pain," Dr. Olga Vucavich remarked quietly to her companions.

"What about his military record?" Talmadge asked the young man standing to his right.

"Impressive," Donovan admitted grudgingly. "I wouldn't want to take him on."

"He's a maverick," Project Backstep's disagreeable chief of security complained from where he stood slightly behind the others.

"Are we sure about this?" Dr. Mentnor asked.

"Weren't you the one who suggested someone with a strong enough reason to live might survive the backstep?" Talmadge admonished the project's lead scientist.

"Yes, but this seems..." the elderly scientist protested.

"He will want to do it," Olga predicted. "To save his son, he will take the risk."

"And we don't have the time to find another chrononaut, Isaac" Donovan interjected. "It's already been four days."

The small group watched as the small casket was slowly lowered into the ground and the mourners began to drift away.

Talmadge nodded to himself as he moved towards the couple standing over their son's grave. "Colonel O'Neill, may I speak with you alone for a moment?"

Jack turned to see a barrel chested man with a salt and pepper beard and expensive taste in clothing looking at him expectantly as he fiddled with the cigar he held in his left hand. Jack's well trained eye immediately pegged him as a spook. "Who are you?" Jack demanded angry that this man would approach him in the middle of his son's funeral.

"My name is Bradley Talmadge" the other man introduced himself. "I have a proposition for you."

"Can't it wait," Jack snapped tightening his arm around Sara's shoulder. "We just buried our son, for God's sake."

"How would you like the chance to change that?" Talmadge asked the grief-stricken father.

"Get out of here!" Jack hissed stepping away from his wife as she gasped her own outrage at the question. The menace apparent in those words and in his posture had two nearby friends jumping forward to grab Jack's arms. "Get the fuck away from me you sick son of a bitch!"

Talmadge chomped thoughtfully on his cigar as he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew an envelope and a business card which he handed to a shocked Sara O'Neill. "You're being recalled to active duty, Colonel O'Neill," he informed the enraged man. "You have twenty-four hours to report."


	7. Resistance: V

They came aboard a fleet of fifty ships that hovered over Earth's greatest cities from Los Angeles to Paris to Moscow. The Visitors offered technology and knowledge in exchange for resources Earth had in abundance. They came in peace they said.

They lied.

And were it not for Teal'c, Earth would have believed them. Some would have been skeptical at first, but they would have been lulled into believing by the friendly Visitors. It was, Teal'c explained, their modus operandi. On the many worlds where humans and jaffa slaved for the goa'uld, whispers of the Visitors kept the slaves from rebelling against their goa'uld masters. Teal'c detailed what he remembered from the reports of the few survivors from worlds the Visitors had invaded. It would begin he said with people disappearing. On some worlds, it was the scientists that disappeared first while on others it would be the warriors or the clergy or those who were different in some way. The Visitors always chose one group to set the general population against. These fears would be fed by those the Visitors would brainwash to turn against their own. As the fears of the native population grew, the Visitors would begin to secretly loot the resources they needed. It was better to be a slave than cattle, Teal'c told those assembled in the White House Situation Room to hear his briefing, as he explained the eating habits of the Visitors. More than a few of the assembled faces went from the pale of shock to sickly green.

"So what do we do?" President Hayes asked when Teal'c had finished.

Teal'c immediately spoke surprising O'Neill and Hammond with his vehemence. "They must not be allowed to learn of the Stargate," he said.

"Teal'c is right," General Hammond agreed. "The SGC's going to be our best shot at getting more intelligence on these Visitors, more weapons to fight them. In the worst case scenario, Mr. President, the Stargate will be our best chance of getting as many of our people away from them as possible."

"The SGC needs to fall off the map," Colonel Jack O'Neill declared from his seat beside Hammond having spent the entire briefing mulling over possibilities in his head. "You heard what Teal'c said about their brainwashing techniques. We need to move now before they infiltrate us."

The arguments went back and forth for hours, but in the end Hayes agreed. In the following days, all trace of the SGC in government records and computers was destroyed. At the same time a steady stream of supplies were carried through the Stargate to the Alpha and Beta sites as the SGC was quickly and efficiently dismantled from within. Five days after the Visitors arrived, two trucks left the Cheyenne Mountain complex headed for Wright Patterson Air Force Base. They never arrived. Instead the two trucks found their way into the depths of a pit mine somewhere in the Midwest. The Stargate was quickly reassembled and put back into operation as personnel and supplies began streaming back to Earth from the Alpha and Beta sites. The miles of tunnels that spread like a spiders web under the town made the mine an ideal base, and the constant coming and going of trucks would help hide their movements. The resistance had begun.


	8. Retreat!: Aliens

Jack pulled up short as Teal'c abruptly stopped as the cave system they had been exploring suddenly opened up into a large chamber. He raised an eyebrow then stepped agilely around his jaffa teammate to see what had caused him to stop.

"We must leave, O'Neill," Teal'c demanded not taking his eyes from the site before him.

"Weird looking stalactites," Jack commented as he trained his flashlight across the floor of the chamber.

"Stalagmites, sir" Carter corrected him. "Stalactites hang down from the roof. Stalagmites rise up from the floor."

"Right, stalagmites," Jack corrected himself. "Weird looking stalagmites then."

"They are not stalagmites," Teal'c informed his commander. "They are eggs, and we must leave **_now_**, O'Neill" Teal'c reiterated as he lowered his staff weapon to point at the hundreds of ovals spread throughout the chamber. "We must leave this planet immediately!" Teal'c demanded.

That got Jack's attention. Anything scary enough to push Teal'c's panic button was bound to be very, very bad. "Teal'c take point," Jack commanded snapping the safety off his P-90. "Daniel, you follow then Carter. I'll watch our sixes."

The rest of the team heard it a moment after Teal'c. A strange clicking noise reminiscent of the Replicators coming from the cavern beyond the eggs.

"Retreat!" Teal'c roared.


	9. Reunion: Navy NCIS

"What are Marines doing assigned to an Air Force base in Colorado?" Tony asked as he shifted the weight of his bag on his shoulder.

"That's classified," Gibbs told his agent.

"Then can you tell us why we got assigned this case at least?" Kate queried as she followed the other two men towards their waiting transport.

"We were requested," Gibbs answered.

"By who?" she asked.

"Senator Robert Kinsey," Gibbs told her not bothering to disguise the contempt in his voice as he strode toward the vehicle and the Air Force officer waiting for them by the driver's side door.

Kate and Tony traded looks at that information.

"Ahh, boss, why would Senator Kinsey request us?" Tony asked. "You can't stand each other."

"About the only thing my brother and I have in common," Gibbs grumbled quietly.

"Your brother?" Kate asked.

"I didn't know you had a brother, boss" Tony exclaimed. "What's he like?"

"Half-brother," he explained. "And you're about to find out, Tony. Jack," Gibbs greeted the Air Force officer waiting for them.

"Jethro," the officer replied before asking, "How's Mom?"

"You'd know if you called her once in a while," Jethro complained.

The two brothers glared at one another while Kate and Tony watched and wisely kept silent.


	10. Reinforcements Ghostbusters Spoilers Sea...

"This lockdown thing isn't working, Carter" Jack accused the newly promoted lieutenant colonel.

"No, sir" Jack watched her agree through the video monitor in the security room.

"No chance that Anubis might just give up and haunt someone else?" Jack suggested.

"No, Jack" Daniel denied from another monitor.

"Got any other ideas?" O'Neill asked the three members of SG-1 looking at him from their various locations.

"No, sir" Sam admitted.

"None," Daniel reluctantly agreed.

"Teal'c had a suggestion," Jack told the other two. "He thinks we should send for reinforcements. I'm e-mailing you the files now."

Jack watched as Daniel and Sam opened the files he had sent them.

"The Ghostbusters, sir?" Sam questioned.

"Anubis is a ghost isn't he?" Jack defended Teal'c's idea.

"Well, sort of, Jack, but..." Daniel protested.

"Got any better ideas, Daniel?" General Jack O'Neill demanded repeating his earlier question.

Again the two scientists were forced to concede that they didn't.

"Well then, who we gonna call?" Jack demanded with a mischievous smile.

"I can't believe you just said that, Jack!" Daniel groaned.


	11. Bonus! Redemption: Touched by an Angel

"He hurts so, Tess" Monica murmured watching the devastated man sitting on his child's empty bed holding a loaded automatic pistol in his hand.

"I know, baby" Tess commiserated softly to the younger angel.

"How are we to help him, Tess?" the redheaded angel asked her mentor worriedly.

"Someone else is going to help him. We just have to help him hold on a little longer," Tess told her.

"But what if I can't?" Monica asked.

"Then it falls to me," Andrew told her from where he watched sadly over his next case.

"So do your thing, Miss Wings," Tess commanded.

Monica stepped forward and lightly placed a hand on Jack's shoulder. Instantly, a profoundly peaceful feeling settled over the grieving father and his tight grip on the pistol relaxed. All the guilty demons of thought that had crowded his mind since the moment Charlie had died quieted. For nearly an hour Jack sat inured by the touch of an angel from the war being fought for his soul until he heard the tread of feet coming up the stairs.

Monica withdrew her touch and the two angels watched as the Air Force officers came and collected Colonel Jack O'Neill for a meeting with General West.

"Now it's up to him to make the right choice," Tess announced quietly as she turned to leave. "Time to go, baby."

"Andrew?" Monica asked noticing he wasn't following.

"I'm not done yet," Andrew told her.


End file.
